


Hourglass upside down

by soulofaminaanima



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, NO TRENT IN THIS ONE, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Takes place in blumenthal, Time Travel, all the ways you can mess up with time, working title: Caleb's at it again
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 20:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15671004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulofaminaanima/pseuds/soulofaminaanima
Summary: There are strangers in Blumenthal. Sightings of devil-like people lurking in the shadows, goblins and half orcs wandering the fields at night and brightly coloured people asking strange questions in back alleys.“Is this Blumenthal?”“What year is it?”“Where can we find the Widogast household?”





	Hourglass upside down

**Author's Note:**

> So I started another time travel story and while I'm still working on Skipping Stones I'll jump between writing these two for now. This is yet another way Caleb can mess with time travel, or maybe I just like writing a young Caleb Widogast.
> 
> Not beta read and I invite anyone to give me some pointers. To much describtion? Wrong grammar? Other inconsistencies?

The first far traveller comes alone. Caleb’s yet to notice a pattern, so for a year or so he knows the man only as ‘that one strange visitor’.

Blumenthal doesn’t get many visitors this time of year. Blumenthal doesn’t get many visitors at all. With the soldiers taking off for war again, there are probably more people leaving the place than there are coming back.

The snow makes the few roads that travel through the fields and the village inaccessible for most carts and traveling by foot is madness. With the wolves, Goblins and other dangers coming out of the nearby woods, it’s better to stay inside. Caleb’s been working on the broken fence that surrounds their little home. It’s not high enough to stop wolves from jumping over, but it’s the only thing they have.

The man that stands on the other side of the small wooden fence is definitely a stranger from out of town, though it takes Caleb a moment to really place him as one.

The dirty clothes and torn-up coat the man’s wearing look very similar to his own and everybody else’s clothing in Blumenthal. His hair, though. His hair is a familiar shade of ginger that hides his stark blue eyes. Caleb’s first thought is that this man looks a lot like Father, but his father is away with the army and Caleb knows it’s another forty-two days and roughly ten hours before father will be back again.

An uncle maybe? Caleb only has an aunt on his mother’s side of the family and although this theory is possible, something tells Caleb it’s not the truth.

“Can I help you?” He asks the stranger in Common while standing up. He’d been trying to fix the fence with the spare tools they still own. One of the hinges had broken off from use over the years, but without any metal to replace it with, it was unlikely he’d be able to fix it. 

The broken fence was only the smallest of Caleb’s problems this time of year, but his eyes had still watered over as it took him longer and longer to work on the metal and wood in front of him. His trousers had soaked up the cold snow and his fingers were red from handling the frosty metal. Through the tears in his eyes, it had taken him a minute or so to notice the stranger standing on the other side of the fence.

The man had not spoken a word while he approached. He only stared at Caleb with those weirdly familiar eyes. And then he spoke in Zemnian with a soft but slightly raspy voice. “You’re thirteen, right?”

Caleb blinks at the stranger, why would he want to know that? His mother had warned him not to talk to strangers, so Caleb stays quiet. Maybe Caleb’s perplexed expression is enough of an answer, because the man continues. “How many days is it ‘till Winter’s Crest?”

Caleb stays quiet again. Should he ask the man to leave? Caleb looks back over his shoulder at the house. Light shines through the cracks of the window and Caleb knows he should fix that before the weather really started to turn sour. It was getting late and Mother was probably preparing supper already. She’d taught him not to talk to strangers, but did that include telling them to go away?

“Caleb,” the man says and isn’t it concerning he knows his name “please tell me. How many days until Winter’s Crest.” Caleb had done the counting in his head the first time the stranger had asked him, so his voice comes out steady and sure of his answer. “It’s another sixty-four days. The snow is just early this year.”

The man nods and offers him a small thanks. Caleb stares at the man for another moment. He looks exhausted, like he ran all the way from Rexxentrum, or fought a whole clan of werewolves in the forest. His clothing is old and frayed, the thin scarf around his shoulders barely having any effect against the biting winds. It’s the downside of living in the Zemni Fields; having no protection from the elements in winter. Caleb’s own clothing isn’t any better, but Mother dresses him in extra layers any time he goes outside. Right now, he’s wearing his father’s extra set of clothing, since Father had not brought them with him to the south. 

“Father isn’t here right now.” Caleb says as an afterthought. Maybe the man knows his father? Maybe he’s also a soldier and was he trying to visit his friend. Maybe he knows father and is he here to tell them that Father isn’t coming- Caleb cuts that thought off immediately.

Father will be back soon, only forty-two more days.

“I know.” the man answers. “Will you give this to your mother?” And he holds out a small bottle with a red watery liquid inside. It is has no label and although Caleb never owned one, he knows what a healing potion looks like. “She’s sick again, isn’t she? This will help her, but only give it to her when you really have to, okay?”

As in a daze, Caleb reaches forward to take the potion. The glass feels slightly warm inside his grip. Maybe it’s because the man was holding it for a while, or maybe the potion’s just magically warm somehow, he doesn’t know. 

With his eyes on the potion in his hands – a healing potion! – Caleb doesn’t notice the man leaving. When he looks up, the weirdly familiar figure is gone. Caleb picks up his tools and rushes back inside. He hides the potion in his pocket until he can find a moment store it safely. There’s no way Mother will believe what happened and she’ll probably never use it for herself if she knew what it was. 

Caleb’s already thinking about when to give it to her, since her coughing and weird weakness in her body usually comes and goes in waves. 

Maybe, if he wasn’t so focussed on his plans, he’d see the absence of a second pair of footprints in the snow near the fence. On the outside of their small farmland, nothing shows that there once had been a person. As if the man never approached the fence and never left it at all. As if a man like that one didn’t even exist in this world.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @ghostofaminaanima on tumblr.


End file.
